You lean on the shovel, pulling in ragged breaths through your nose. Your legs shake. The splinters in your fingers hum along to your heartbeat.

The hole in front of you is three feet deep. That hole, and the countless others dotting the field, some right against the line of trees.

The sun dips below the horizon, and darkness settles onto the—

You close your eyes, grit your teeth, and REGRESS.

You open your eyes, and the sun is high in the sky.

Five hours before. The field, unbroken. The strength back in your muscles.

You walk to a new patch of ground, and begin to dig.

You've REGRESSED four times. Five hours, four times—twenty hours, just about. Not the worst you've ever done.

But as you dig, you blink, look up, and see the holes again—too many, hundreds, like the cratered surface of a green moon. And just as soon as they appear, they vanish.

You shake your head. Focus.

Two REGRESSIONS ago, you considered ditching the shovel and getting a metal detector. But that's just wishful thinking. They would have thought of that.

Stop thinking. Dig.

You take a piss on a nearby tree, like you have every time.

Stop thinking. Dig.

You should have eaten something beforehand. You were in too much of a hurry. Now sweat is stinging your eyes and your stomach is full only of dread.

Stop thinking. Dig.

You slam your boot against the footrest of the shovel, but instead of burrowing into the soil, it collides with something hard.

Three REGRESSSIONS ago, that would have excited you. Made your heart rate tick up. But now you know it's likely just a long-dead root, or a rock.

Yeah, just a root. Fuck. Keep digging.

The sun dips below the horizon, and darkness settles onto the—

You draw in breath—through your mouth and nose, draw it in hard like a snarl in reverse.

You don't close your eyes, this time. You keep them open, and REGRESS.

You watch the world shudder, twist, fold upon itself. Watch it seize up, halt, crush itself with its own momentum.

And then... gradually at first...

It turns.

Turns backward.

The sun rises, agonizingly, from the red edge of the western horizon. The shadows grow shorter and shorter, pulling close, as if afraid. The sky mottles from dark blue-purple to red to blue, all too quickly, like a bruise coming undone. The trees sway wrongly to a backwards wind.

And you see yourself, digging in reverse. Burying. Your own motions going from tired and labored back to energetic and driven.

And then...

It stops, and you're back.

You heft up the shovel—

And feel something warm on your face.

Another nosebleed, probably. Not a big deal, since—

You touch your nose, your lip, but find them dry. Your cheeks are wet.

Your hand traces upwards, to your eyes.

You pull your fingers away, stare at the redness between them. Taste it, out of habit. Bitter.

... Your eyes, this time. You're bleeding from your eyes.

Somewhere, deep inside you, something roils and growls—and it forces itself from your stomach into your chest and climbs up your throat.

A chuckle.

You've bled from your nose, your gums, your ears, your fingernails... but never your eyes. This is new.

You wipe your red tears on the back of your sleeve. So be it. If you die out here of blood loss, at least you'll have a grave to fall into.

You keep digging.

The sun hangs low in the sky, making you squint. And again, you are surrounded by holes, empty holes, looking up at you expectantly.

One more.

You've said that hundreds of times today—the many todays of today—and like all of those times before, you mean it.

One more.

The muscles of your back strain, your neck aches, your arms are aflame, your joints creak, but you furrow your brow and heave the soil away—

And three feet down, you stop.

Your shovel hits something soft.

Twenty five hours of anxiety reawakens in you, surges for release but finds none. You just stand there, clinging to your shovel like an anchor.

You reach down, on your knees and carefully, gently, begins pulls away handfuls of soil.

You see the back of a head.

There is no feeling in your fingers. You pull away more soil.

The back of a neck.

You touch it.

You jerk back, frozen, struggle to level your breathing.

Buried face down.

You slowly begin to rock back and forth. Your knees groan beneath you.

You were ready for this. You had gone over it in your head so many times. You would stand up, tall, straight, strong, and roar your wrath to the heavens. You would scatter the clouds. You would shake the sky itself. Your rage would be felt in rainfall and drought across the world. Your hate would illuminate the night, and no one would sleep. All would feel your hate. All would know.

... But none of that comes.

Instead, you simply sit on your heels, head down, blinking as something warm runs down your face.

The sun dips below the horizon, and darkness settles onto the field.